Michael The once overbearing mountains
have yielded their ferocious growling.
What was once a daunting climb has given way to a steady horizon.
Through all the growing pains, the seemingly impossible expectations and the self questioning
It seems I have made it to solid ground.
That is not to say I won’t have steeper trails off in the distance,
But for now, I can take a deeper breath and seek the self reflection I deserve.
I’m searching for a way to avoid the censorship of my thoughts when it comes to the expressions of crucial emotions.
It’s as if the distance between my fingertips and mind is dedicated towards the production of a film these words will project.
As if this voice sitting above my head is waiting with a loose whip, ready to punish me from the terrible reviews you may release.
I once feared mornings with you, I thought the mundane repetitiveness would screw deeper and deeper into our minds until we are nothing. But these days, after spending many mornings with you peacefully asleep next to me, I have fallen in love with it. I look forward to the quiet moments before you open your eyes, the soft voice in the morning mumbling “good morning”, the stumbles towards the kitchen bench before the coffee machine echoing off the walls. I have fallen in love with the small talks across the tiny round table set by the window. It’s moments like this that reminds me of the admiration I have with you in my life.
I want to stab you in the heart, and corrupt every vein throughout your body. I want to squeeze out every last breath out of your lungs and leave you there to panic the same way I did. I want every corner of your mind fixated on the dismemberment of your own life. Everything that has ever happened, or is happening, or will happen stuck in your thoughts from the second you wake up to the last moment of the day. I want you gone.
There are words too afraid to leave my fingertips, words that could only be spoken through the touch of your spine, the soft bumps lined down your delicate body.
I can’t stop thinking of these…things, these ideas.
Ideas that aren’t complete, ideas I can’t compact enough words into to display them. My mind can’t help but trod on forbidden lands, painful wounds that are freshly sewn together.
I don’t know, it’s rough these days. My hand trembles with every sentence I write down, these unfulfilling thoughts pulling at my heart strings. I have so many emotions, so many messages I must send you, but they never make it past my fingertips.
I can longer get through the nights without your touch in my mind. I’m getting lost in the beats of every song cycling through my headset, every beat reminding me of your heart. Every slow beat pumping my body, keeping my life afloat. From night to night, I find new songs to spiral through on repeat. I never find myself reaching the end, knowing that the dead silence that sinks in after lights out will pull me deeper into the ocean.
A small round bump felt through the thin layer of my head, followed by the lines of hair falling from it. The tiny nerve regrowing, remembering the foreigner that decided to stay. The trail lost but found behind the cliffs of my ear, hidden gently into my skin. But if you press hard enough, you can make out the tiny map of a memory, a painful reminder of reasons. These small features of myself will always be a mixed bag of emotions; the beauty of sound, yet the cruelty of a flaw. I’ve had my Cochlear Implant for almost eight years now. In all that time, I had moments of appreciation, of happiness towards having a second chance at hearing. But there were also moments of pure hatred, of this overwhelming feeling of crushing it with whatever blunt object I can find. I never quiet this outright, but I hate that in order for me to hear, I had to invite such foreign beings into my life. The same ones that cause me immense headaches, degrading looks from strangers, and the deterioration of my own confidence.
Everytime I submerge my ears, I listen to the beat of my own heart.
My heart, slowly beating, kept in its cage as I linger around it with fascinated thoughts.
As I grip that caged beast, it struggles with every force.
Thumping harder and harder against my ears, my lungs screaming alongside it.
Every deep breath begging for mercy for its friend as I hear it almost bursting.
These quick moments of momentum never fail to bring me back to reality.
I am someone important with deafening insides continuously pumping to keep me alive.
A puzzled mess broken down on the first night, followed by the shattered glass beneath my bare toes. I keep replaying the points in time where those tiny, shameful thoughts developed. These frustrations terribly difficult to express directly without a hint of fear. These fearful questions emptying out my mind, forcing my everything to slowly deteriorate back into the shadows.